Hailing from Athens, Greece, Tsakalis AudioWorks endeavours to bring the sound that lives in your head to life.

When founder Chris Tsakalis started out repairing gear for players in Athens, his first step into effects pedals was a new custom-built tube-driven overdrive that gathered the attention of the local music scene. Within a few years and stocked with a wide range of effects to share with the world, he developed the Tsakalis AudioWorks brand.

With a focus on hand-building and only using quality components, their ethos of simple and easy-to-use pedals to provide the player with a host of different options without getting in the way of their creativity, has resulted in a deep and diverse range of internationally critically acclaimed pedals.

The Tsakalis range includes versatile Boost, Overdrive, Fuzz and Distortion pedals such as the veritable “Marshall in a Box” ROOM #40 and a set of tone champions that include the Six, the Molecular Boost, the Nerve MKII High-Gain dual distortion, plus the vintage-inspired Experience Fuzz Octave.

However, this brand is not just about distortion and fuzz pedals. Tsakalis also offer the award-winning cab sim and preamp monster – Multicab 4, as well as the Zipper MKII optical compressor and a range of simple, yet nifty, ambience and modulation pedals that include the Ocean V2 triple reverb, the TILAY analog-tape-voiced delay and the Galactic multi modulation, while the juicy funkiness of the Phonkify envelope filter/octaver completes the line-up.

Room #40

Marshall Mojo in a Box

Heavily inspired by the tone and feel of the following legendary Marshall amps: the non master volume series PLEXI Super Lead and Super Bass and the master volume series JMP and JCM800 .

Over the years, Tsakalis AudioWorks have had many different types of Marshall amps on their workbench, some for repairs and others for customization. Being huge fans of the sound of these classic amplifiers, that still continues to excite them through the music of so many artists, they decided to try and capture its mojo – the true essence of the soul of this sound – and carefully place it in a little box. Thus the Room #40 was born!

Using JFET technology, Tsakalis tried to stay loyal to the tone and feel of the following legendary Marshall amps: the non master volume series PLEXI Super Lead & Super Bass  and the master volume series JMP and JCM800. They focussed on emulating the compression and sag coming from the power amp section, when these amps are pushed to the edge, while at the same time giving access to two famous mods, mod #39 found in the PLEXI) and mod #34 of the JMP and JCM800. Of course the manifestation of their love for the late great Eddie Van Halen, who created the so called “brown sound” using an ohmite variac (variable transformer used to lower or raise the voltage going into the amplifier), could not be absent from this endeavor.

Finally, they incorporated the Presence control to make the sound adjustable to any circumstance, regardless of whether you are plugged into the front of an amp that may or may not have a bright cap or even straight to a power amp.

Six

Booster, Overdrive, Distortion

For many years Tsakalis AudioWorks have wanted to create a truly mind-blowing overdrive / distortion pedal that would be small and practical yet would offer huge powerful tones, natural feel and flexibility. And of course, to do that they needed reference. So they decided to combine all the good stuff found in the legendary Timmy, Blues Breaker and King Of Tone pedals, and try to come up with that extra something that would take things even further.

The Six – Booster, Overdrive, Distortion is the culmination of a long period of modifying and prototyping and countless hours of testing and swapping ICs, capacitors and diodes.

Not willing to stop experimenting until T.A.W. had a pedal that would really speak to us in the studio and on stage, they decided to completely nerd out and try some unconventional methods. It was during this process that they discovered something really innovative…

Looking for that magic ingredient, they decided to think out of the box and removed all the capacitors from the audio path (coupling capacitors), which resulted in a more natural feel than ever before and respect to the original tone of the guitar without any added compression or color that would be coming from the coupling capacitors. By applying what they call cap-less technology®, you can really hear the character of your instrument and consequently your own hands!

Experience

Fuzz Octave

Experience is a unique Fuzz & Octave up pedal that was designed to revive the sounds of the 60’s and 70’s with a modern touch.

It features 2 stand-alone channels in series (fuzz and octave) which can be used individually or together, offering a wide range of dirty goodness!

The Octave channel produces a classic and easy to manipulate octave up effect, sitar & harmonica like sounds, enhancing your tone with ringing octaves and micro-phonic feedback at the end of every note. It features separate volume and tone controls for a wide range of colors.

The fuzz channel is based on the Jordan™ Boss Tone fuzz circuit and is capable of producing a wide range of tones. From mild and creamy overdrive and classic fuzzy tones, all the way to heavily distorted goodness with sub octaves, similar to trombone and analog synth! It is equipped with 2 vintage silicon transistors with FET clipping for richness and detail and four controls (gain, volume, tone and damage) with which you can adjust the type of distortion.

Combining the 2 channels is where the real Experience begins! Create your signature sound exploring the Experience’s endless tonal capabilities!

Unleash your creativity and let the Experience do the rest…

Molecular Boost

Boost, Preamp, Buffer, Volume Pedal

The Molecular Boost is a small but powerful and versatile stomp box. It can be used as a buffer, a booster, a pre-amp or a volume pedal and it can be placed anywhere in your rig.

An internal voltage doubler ensures that the Molecular boost can handle any signal level, leaving the quality of your tone intact. A dual high speed FET op-amp is responsible for matching the impedance of most pickups and piezos and for accurately preserving the character of any instrument plugged into it, while driving even the longest cables without any signal loss.

Enjoy a generous amount of boost from 0dB. to +18 dB by adjusting the easily accessible external knob.

Use the four external dip switches on the left side of the Molecular to dive into some serious tone shaping and to access extra features such as the boosted frequency range (highs or mids), a high cut filter, and the XP input.

Also, an internal switch allows selecting between True bypass and Buffered bypass modes, so that you experience zero signal loss even when the pedal is bypassed.

There is more! Connect any volume or expression pedal to the XP input to control the overall volume of the boosted signal when the pedal is engaged, or the unity level when the pedal is disengaged and in buffered bypass mode.

TILAY

Tape & Analog LoFi Delay

The TILAY (short for Time Layer) delay pedal reaches up to 650 milliseconds of delay time and features two types of delay, Tape & Analog selectable via a dedicated toggle switch.

It uses both analog and digital worlds for best results. Α fully analog path featuring a high-speed FET op-amp and top-quality passive components to ensure the utmost respect to your original signal, combined in parallel with a digital device, which is responsible for the repeats of the delay.

Tape mode simulates the tape saturation and brightness of the old school Tape Echo delay units. With an internal trimmer you can adjust the amount of tape saturation, like changing the tape size of the Tape Echo!

Analog mode emulates the warmth and smoothness analog delays are well known for.